Daniel Fisher—who records as Physical Therapy—has established himself through work as a rogue remixer and his associations with internet-savvy, visually inclined misfits like Elite Gymnastics and Mykki Blanco. These details have obscured the fact that his productions are rather conventional. A stylist at heart, his excellent "Drone On" predicted this year's trendy return to jungle. Non-Drowsy, a free, seven-track EP, marks the launch of Fisher's new label, Allergy Season, and sees him mining the abundant melodicism of early 90s house and garage, itself a popular inspiration for his contemporaries.
Fisher's greatest strength is his easy way with melody, and the rhythmically simple, luxe grooves that he carves out on Non-Drowsy are fine showcases for this talent. Simple, staccato basslines, reverberating vocal samples and gassy pads are neatly deployed and retracted. The album feels like classic dance music even when its direct antecedents are difficult to place. I think this might have been the point: to recreate and explore without ever getting too personal. The approach works best when Fisher chops up vocal samples into micro-melodies, as on "Coffee" or during the end of "Huminbeen". It's an approach that recalls both old-school sample scientists like Marc Kinchen as well as contemporaries like Four Tet. The haunted, tense piano chords that dominate "Leonia" and the queasy synths that oscillate in the background of "4:21" are excellent facsimiles. Nothing on Non-Drowsy sounds out of place.
This approach highlights one of the chief frustrations of listening to Non-Drowsy: it never feels explicitly retro or modern. It's a slippery album, one that's agreeable when it's on but fails to leave an impression. The tracks get no help from their mastering; Non-Drowsy is sonically mushy, its mids and highs bleeding into one another, its bass and drums failing to provide any real punch or grit; the arrangements glide by unmolested. This is a problem in part because the era and style of dance music that Non-Drowsy references was often expertly produced, its frequencies and arrangements optimized for maximum dancefloor impact. And while it's possible that this was done for effect—as a commentary on club music, or on the listeners who push it through plastic earbuds and muffled laptops—it doesn't aid the music (and your mileage on the validity of that theory will and should vary).
But Non-Drowsy isn't disappointing because it's not perfectly executed club music. It's disappointing because it's difficult to reconcile the creativity that Fisher displays in his videos, remixes, and (admittedly bad) album artwork and the polite, uninteresting dance tracks on offer. Recognizing that Fisher has talent and maybe a unique voice is easy; finding that voice in Non-Drowsy is hard. Fisher remains a young artist—Non-Drowsy is just his second conventional release, and it's a free seven-track EP—so some growing pains are to be expected. Fisher has worked hard to present himself as a batshit urban cowboy with great taste and cool friends; the moment he starts sounding as such should produce some pretty interesting tracks, in whatever style has caught his fancy that day.
